The Philosophy
by The Konfessionist
Summary: Zara, the second 'Courier Six', traveled to the Divide and returned to the Mojave as someone else that couldn't even be called a shadow of her former self. This is a short tale of the affect Ulysses' had upon her, and how a lesson she had taught him long ago would return to repeat history upon a newborn New Vegas. Some spoilers for Lonesome Road can be found inside.


**A/N: For Christmas, I had gotten the DLCs for Fallout: _New Vegas _and gave them a try. I was pleasantly surprised by 3 out of 4 of them (Honest Hearts didn't really do much for me, but coming across the fabled Burned Man was a wonderful experience), but the Divide affected me the most. I couldn't put my finger on why, and the moment I had finished it and returned to the Mojave wasteland, I put down my controller and I got to writing. This short story is the product of that, and I hope you all enjoy!**

_**Summary: Zara, the second 'Courier Six', traveled to the Divide and returned to the Mojave as someone else that couldn't even be called a shadow of her former self. This is a short tale of the affect Ulysses' had upon her, and how a lesson she had taught him long ago would return to repeat history upon a newborn New Vegas.**_

**Thank you to all who took the time to read this oneshot, and please don't be afraid to drop by my profile and check out some of my other short stories!**

**Happy reading, happy writing!**

**~Konfessionist out!~**

* * *

Zara had come to the Divide, but as to why she felt the desire to go there—she couldn't find a single and true answer within herself. It wasn't an appetite to have questions satiated, it was something much more than that and it was something that went beyond her level of reasoning. It was curiosity, and trying to satisfy one's curiosity in the Wasteland was a very dangerous task. Practically suicidal.

She lost her courier boots when she was reborn in Goodsprings and she vowed never to put them on again. After she killed Benny, she retired her adventurer's armor because her brain was tired of asking questions and she had gotten all the important answers by that point in time, so she didn't need to go and look for herself anymore. Now, she lived the life of a cautious scavenger with an allegiance to the NCR and a vow to fight with them at the Dam when the time came. She thought they were trying to do the right thing while House only fought for the Strip and Legion wouldn't stop until the landscape was red—like an angry bull that did not know when to rest. Thinking she had made her peace when she was living a quaint life in the Lucky 38 with her companions, where she didn't ask questions anymore and didn't have the curiosity to go searching for anything, something had awakened inside her.

Something that had been activated by the courier before her.

Back when she was a fearless adventurer, she plundered the Mojave and many places outward—the crater of Big MT that crawled with rogue experiments of Old World doctors on a loop, the poisonous slums below the prized Sierra Madre casino where the narrow streets had almost been her grave several times over, the canyons of Zion that trembled with nature and beauty and people that almost convinced her to stay… but no matter where she traversed, she was finding pieces of him and his presence and the work of his hands when she really had no intention of looking for any of him. Zara found his words on the lips of Johnson Nash in Primm; his voice in scattered holotapes within the Big MT crater, and a single question he had asked the scientists that frightened them so much they had erased all memory of it; his hands within Father Elijah's madness, as he supplied to the former Elder the location of the Sierra Madre and its many condemning treasures; his dreaded hair on the scalps of the White Legs in Zion, and how Joshua Graham expected a courier that wasn't her and had been Legion brethren. It was as if he was everywhere; his presence and influence in reaches far beyond her but she still didn't know his name because, like a phantom, he was vague. He left traces but was never really there.

At least, his name hadn't been known to her until a message had been signaled to her Pip-Boy with coordinates to the Divide with her old name—Courier Six—written at the bottom. A peculiar name had signed the coordinates. It was a name she didn't recognize, but somehow knew, and realization knotted the synapses in her brain when everything came together; that the words and the voice that asked frightening questions and the supplying hands and the dreaded hair belonged to that name. Ulysses.

It was suddenly like she had known him all this time… a phantom that was no longer a phantom. An overwhelming desire to follow the coordinates washed over her like a tumultuous ocean, drowning the cautionary scavenger, and she left for the Divide with her companions none the wiser (as she had told them she was going to travel to Zion for some peace before the war for Hoover Dam). Ulysses was calling her to the Divide and she _would _allow her legs to carry her there; not because he left a trace of himself within her forgotten past, she didn't care to know what had been there before Goodsprings after she killed Benny, but because she was curious… and as she watched from the shore of the sea as the scavenger drowned, she ignored the rule of 'curiosity is dangerous' as she traveled to the Divide, because as much as she knew that the way to him would be trying and dangerous, not for a moment did she think that meeting one man would utterly destroy her. She had wrongfully underestimated the type of man that Ulysses was.

Zara didn't believe that Ulysses was dangerous enough to destroy the saviour image she had created of herself for the crime-filled Mojave; to destroy all confidence that she had and make her believe that the horror and hostility of the Divide was created by her ignorant hands; to destroy the strong and loyal faith that she placed within the NCR and how they could turn the Mojave around for the better; to destroy her mind so it began asking questions again that it had no business in asking; but, ultimately, he destroyed the very base she created her character upon. She began to question absolutely everything—her morals and decisions, where her faiths were laid and where her dice were cast… Ulysses was dangerous enough that he destroyed everything that she was, and like her curiosity and the Divide, she became dangerous herself because she was now a woman without purpose, direction, or hope… just an empty shell with an empty head and empty hands.

Zara was just another being that the Divide had swallowed up and would never spit back out. She wouldn't try to claw her way out of its throat, either… and even after she and Ulysses said their pieces and butted heads, and he with his flag fell before the object of a second Armageddon, and she had retreated far from the Divide—back to New Vegas, to the two-headed bear, to her friends—it was still lingering within her heart and in her head. She destroyed everything Ulysses had hoped for in the Divide before her rebirth in Goodsprings, and in return, even though he was dead, he had still won over her. There was nothing left within her.

That was until, one late night, sitting alone in the cocktail lounge of the Lucky 38 with Ulysses' duster in her drunk hands, she came to a realization within the stars of his Old World flag. New Vegas was still a young babe—yet to have grown up and decide what it would do for the Wasteland, who it would be home for, and what it would ultimately stand for. New Vegas was still so young that it could learn that there were many directions for it to walk in, given the proper hands to nurture it, and to be sculpted into something that would allow new beginnings if it could let go. No influence from the two-headed bear, or the bull, or anything else.

Ulysses, amidst his hatred, spoke of a lesson Zara had taught him—that a single person could ultimately change history. In his final words upon a holotape, he spoke of how they could build, and then destroy… but it didn't end there because it didn't have the ability to. It would continue going, like a never ending cycle, because human nature didn't change and it was within human nature the need to build and then the desire to destroy. When Ulysses had destroyed her completely, his words were going to build her up again, and she was going to be _much _stronger this time around.

His words were going to cause the heads of the NCR's bear to turn on each other, and bite and claw and wound each other until the animal would collapse and bleed out into the Mojave dust. His words were going to cause Caesar's bull to see so much red that it would blind itself and charge right into her blade. His words were going to strangle the life Mr. House tried to breathe into New Vegas, and his emaciated corpse would decay as his securitron army would fall. When the dust of their defeats would finally settle from the winds, on the horizon would come marching an independent and mature New Vegas that would proudly carry upon its back an Old World flag. Ulysses' words taught back to Zara her own lesson and showed her that New Vegas had hope. She would destroy it and then rebuild it upon the lesson that they shared together.

Upon the day of the battle for Hoover Dam, Zara wore his duster as she fought alone.


End file.
